Last week’s speech by SPD parliamentary leader Rolf Mützenich, in which he rhetorically asked whether it was not time to “think about how to freeze a war,” sparked controversy in the ruling coalition.
March 18, 2024
Germany’s governing coalition is increasingly divided over the country’s Ukraine policy, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) caught in the crossfire by its coalition partners due to softening its stance on support for the war-torn country.
Last week’s speech by SPD parliamentary leader Rolf Mützenich, in which he rhetorically asked whether it was not time to “think about how to freeze a war and end it later,” sparked controversy within the ruling coalition.
While he tried to backtrack on his comment on Saturday, his coalition partners feared that the statement could shift the SPD’s Ukraine policy.
“Mützenich’s disparaging remarks about those in the coalition who think differently and his uninspiring words about freezing the conflict, together with the Chancellor’s government statement, represent a turning point in foreign policy,” liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) parliamentary group deputy leader Michael Georg Link told Tagesspiegel on Sunday.
Last week, Scholz strongly defended his decision not to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine, drawing criticism from his coalition partners.
“What is the ‘Zeitenwende’ still worth if Scholz and Mützenich only ever help Ukraine just enough to prevent it from sinking at the moment?” Link added.
Scholz announced the ‘Zeitenwende’ – or major turning point – following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine as a complete readjustment of German foreign policy.
Mützenich’s call for a freeze on the war in Ukraine has also caused considerable backlash from the other coalition partner. Green Party leader Ricarda Lang told Die Welt that his speech marked a “relapse into the old Russia policy of the Social Democrats.”
On Saturday, SPD heads gathered for a party retreat and defended the views of their group leader.
While emphasising her party’s unwavering support for Ukraine, SPD leader Saskia Esken said that the SPD would “naturally also share the longing for peace, which is especially felt by Ukrainians.” She added that the SPD appealed to the Russian president to return to the negotiating table.
The opposition CDU party also waded into the debate, warning that the SPD is currently testing the waters with the idea of freezing the conflict. According to CDU foreign policy spokesperson Roderich Kiesewetter, the SPD still has a problem with the “romanticisation of Russia that is now catching up with us in Germany in a terrible way”.
Meanwhile, Scholz’s hesitancy to supply Taurus missiles continues to spark conflict within the coalition.
On Friday, highly sensitive information that allegedly justified Scholz’s hesitancy to deliver Taurus missiles was leaked to the news website t-online. The article contained information from a secret meeting of the Bundestag’s defence committee, which was subject to strict confidentiality.
While it is not known who leaked the information, both Green and liberal members of the defence committee were quick to criticise the move heavily. Marie-Agnes Strack Zimmermann, a liberal member of parliament and chair of the defence committee, even threatened to take legal action.
“Leaking information from a secret committee meeting is not a trivial offence. The charges are pending. Anyone who betrays secrets to push through their own agenda has no place in parliament,” she said on X.
Her colleague from the Greens also weighed in.
“Here is someone with very obvious vested interests blabbing from a meeting that was classified as secret & claiming things that are very distorted, to put it kindly,” Green MP Agnieszka Brugger said on X.
“Even taking into account all the classified information, I still think a delivery from Taurus is overdue,” she added.
(Oliver Noyan | Euractiv.de)
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/29710
The SPD is the stumbling block in Germany’s coalition government in Ukraine aid. The coalition is already an unsteady one, and this situation doesn’t help.
Here is what the eloquent and passionate LI poster Volodymyr Kukharenko has to say to those who want to reward genocide:
Anyone preaching “peace” with Russia is either clueless idealist (I say it mildly not to get banned) or supporter of Putin.
What do you mean if someone not giving us weapons because he is “against war”? Letting Russia prevail and peacefully butcher millions of us? We lost to Russia in 1918 because we thought it would bring peace, but in 1933 we were eating own dead children to feed the survivors, because they took the food away, 10 millions died. In 1937-1938 they executed most of our artists, poets and scientists, to say that we are nation of peasants with no culture. My own great-grandfather was executed in 1938, together with his 2 brothers, his 18-years-old daughter died in a month as she could not ovecome the loss. You want me and millions of Ukrainians follow his steps? I have written enough here to get a bullet into my head if they come.
If you think that the times are different and it may never happen again in 21st century, google “bucha massacre photos” from 2022. And do not dare to say it’s staged, I have friends who lost their loved one there, one of my team members is from Bucha. There was a torture chamber in every city in occupied territory we liberated.
In Russia, they are still erecting monuments to Stalin, who was 2nd biggest mass murderer in human history (after Mao). It’s like if Germans were still building monuments to Hitler. Do you really think Russia is doing it for fun only?
In Russian picture of the world we are not Ukrainians, but “spoiled Russians” that need to be “purified”. It means becoming Russians or dying.
In 2014 we had “peace” with them after they took Crimea and Donbas. Instead of pushing on Russia, we were forced to sign the peace agreement. See how it ended? Our own citizens got brainwashed and used against us as cannon fodder in meat assaults. We do not want to be eaten in chunks by another so-called “peace”. And we do not want to kill our own people they will force into their army in several years, like they did after 2014.
That’s why any suggestion of “peace talks” is scary for us, we know very well what comes next. But so many people are so naive or pretend to be such… And sadly those people include prominent figures like the Pope or Elon Musk that spread this virus…
There are many people in this screwed up world who would do good to read this sort of stuff.